IN the smouldering
ruins of Berlin, Elena Rzhevskaya
stooped by a radio to hear the
announcement of the Nazis' final
capitulation, a small box clutched to her
side. It was 8 May 1945 and at Karlshorst,
on the edge of the city, the German high
command had surrendered to Russian,
British and American forces.

David
Irving comments:

WELL, perhaps
not so secret after all. Elena
Rzhevskaya published a book
not long after WW2 with the same
revelations. More
imortant is the work of Lev
Bezymenski, Der Tod von
Adolf Hitler. Bezymenski., a
KGB officer (and, like many of
them, a Jew) was a fine
Intelligence officer, but not
such a conscientious historian;
he was ordered (he said) by the
KGB to conceal in his book the
fact that Hitler shot himself,
and to make various other
propagandistic amendments to the
version of the autopsy report
which he published as an
appendix. A later
edition, post-KGB, rectifies this
however.

A SMALL, BUT
IMMODEST FOOTNOTE: From
historian Hugh
Trevor-Roper I had
obtained in Jan 1968 a perfect
set of the X-rays taken of
Hitler's head at Lötzen in
Sept 1944 (as an MI6 officer he
had directed the British
investigation into Hitler's
demise).

From the
American archives I had the
sketches of Hitler's jaw, drawn
from memory by his dentist
Hugo Blaschke; and from my
friend Lev Bezymenski I had the
photographs of the upper and
lower jaw. All three were
a perfect match, revealing in
particular a solid gold
"telephone" bridge inserted to
replace three teeth in the lower
right jaw (click the image above,
from my books on Hitler and on
his doctor Morell, to
enlarge it).. Over thirty
years ago, in a letter published
in Die Zeit (Hamburg) in
the early 1970s, I brought all
three images together as proof of
Hitler's death. Others (like
Norwegian forensic expert Dr
Reidar F Sognnaes) have
since then padded down the same
track -- but I was first.

But the young interpreter from Soviet
military reconnaissance was subdued as her
comrades across the city broke into wild
celebrations.

Tucked in the satin-lined box she was
clutching were the flesh-specked jawbones
of Adolf Hitler, wrenched from his
corpse just hours earlier by a Russian
pathologist.

A burnt body thought to be the
Führer's had been found by a Red Army
soldier near his bunker days before, but
Joseph Stalin ordered the discovery
be concealed.

"Only two officers knew what I
was carrying and I had to keep my
tongue," Rzhevskaya (85) told The
Observer in a rare interview at her
Moscow apartment.

Hitler's teeth would be key to proving
the corpse was his and only a select few
knew what had been entrusted to
Rzhevskaya.

It was not until the 1960s that her
secret would be revealed, and the full
truth only emerged in Russia a decade
ago.

Her story is a telling reminder of the
jealousy and rivalries that split the
Allies even in their hour of victory, and
foreshadowed the Cold War.

On 8 May, as Soviet soldiers in
Berlin's streets shouted with joy at the
news of German surrender, Rzhevskaya
poured wine for her colleagues with one
hand -- while clamping the little box to
her side with the other.

"Can you imagine how it felt? A young
woman like me who had travelled the long
military road from the edge of Moscow to
Berlin; to stand there and hear that
announcement of surrender, knowing that I
held in my hands the decisive proof that
we had Hitler's remains.

"For me it was a moment of immense
solemnity and emotion; it was
victory."

Rzhevskaya was ordered to carry the
bones by Colonel Vassily Gorbushin,
the head of a tiny secretive Soviet team
tasked with identifying the remains.

Soviet troops were obsessed with
finding Hitler and competing groups roved
around hunting for him.

A Red Army soldier spotted the edge of
a blanket poking from freshly turned earth
in a bomb crater, near the bunker.

Adolf and Eva Hitler's bodies
were soon unearthed and forensic experts
were delighted to find the Nazi leader's
jaw bones in perfect condition. "These are
the key," said one doctor.

After a brief pause to celebrate VE Day
and a frantic search through the ruined
city, Rzhevskaya and her two superior
officers tracked down an assistant
[Käthe
Häusermann] to
Hitler's dentist
[Hugo
Blaschke] who was able to
confirm his identity.